The three main pricing models
Hourly pricing charges for time spent and works well for open-ended maintenance, unclear-scope projects, or ongoing retainer relationships where the total amount of work genuinely varies month to month. Its downside is that it penalizes efficiency — a freelancer who gets faster at their craft effectively earns less per project unless rates increase.
Fixed-price billing quotes a total for a defined scope, which clients generally prefer because it removes uncertainty. It requires a freelancer to estimate accurately, since scope creep eats directly into their margin unless change requests are billed separately and clearly.
Value-based pricing sets the fee according to the business impact of the site rather than hours worked — appropriate for a freelancer building a conversion-focused landing page for a company that will generate significant revenue from it, where the fee might reasonably be several times what hourly billing would produce.
Typical hourly rate ranges
Rates vary widely by region, experience, and specialization, but as a rough sanity check: newer freelancers commonly charge $25 to $50 per hour, mid-level freelancers with a portfolio and repeat clients often land in the $50 to $100 range, and specialists with deep WordPress or performance expertise can charge $100 to $200 or more.
These are ranges to sanity-check against, not fixed benchmarks — local market rates, cost of living, and the freelancer's specific niche (accessibility, WooCommerce, performance optimization) all shift where a rate should realistically sit.
Typical fixed-price ranges by project type
A simple brochure-style site with five to eight pages built from an existing theme framework often falls in the $800 to $2,500 range. A custom-designed theme built from a unique Figma design, with several page templates and no page builder dependency, tends to run $2,500 to $8,000.
Larger projects — multi-language sites, WooCommerce stores with custom checkout flows, or membership sites — regularly exceed $8,000 and are usually better estimated by breaking the project into phases and pricing each phase separately rather than quoting one lump sum upfront.
- Simple brochure site from existing framework: roughly $800-$2,500
- Custom-designed theme from scratch: roughly $2,500-$8,000
- WooCommerce or membership functionality: often $8,000+
- Ongoing maintenance retainer: commonly $100-$500 per month
Where time savings change the pricing math
Anything that shortens the boilerplate portion of a build — setting up the theme folder, wiring header.php and footer.php, getting basic styles in place — improves margin on fixed-price projects because the freelancer delivers the same value in fewer hours.
For example, when a client has already approved a design as a live page (a static HTML preview or an existing site being redesigned), converting that page into a starting WordPress theme with a tool like Themify can save the hours normally spent scaffolding style.css, index.php, and the template files by hand, leaving more time for the WordPress-specific work that actually justifies the fee: dynamic templates, custom fields, and functionality.
How to quote a project without underpricing it
Break the project into concrete deliverables — number of unique templates, custom functionality, content migration, SEO setup, and revision rounds — and estimate hours for each separately rather than guessing a single number for the whole project.
Add a buffer of 15 to 25 percent to account for client feedback rounds and the small unplanned tasks that appear in almost every project, then convert the total hours to a fixed price using the freelancer's target hourly rate as the underlying reference point, even if the client only sees the final number.
- List every deliverable and estimate hours per item
- Multiply by target hourly rate to get a baseline total
- Add a 15-25 percent buffer for revisions and scope drift
- Present the client with one fixed number, not an hourly breakdown
Handling scope creep and change requests
The contract should define what counts as in-scope work versus a billable addition — for example, three rounds of revisions included, additional rounds billed at the hourly rate. Without this written down, most scope creep goes unpaid because there is no clear line to point to.
Sending a short written change order for anything beyond the agreed scope, even for small requests, keeps the relationship professional and avoids the awkward conversation of asking for more money after work is already done for free.
When to raise rates
A useful signal is booking speed: if a freelancer is consistently fully booked weeks in advance, that is direct evidence that current rates are below market clearing price for their skill level. Raising rates for new clients while honoring existing agreements is the standard way to transition.
Rates should also be revisited whenever a freelancer adds a genuinely new capability — performance optimization, accessibility auditing, custom Gutenberg blocks — since these skills justify pricing at a different tier than general theme building.
Frequently asked questions
- Should freelancers ever charge below market rate to build a portfolio?
- Occasionally taking a discounted project for a strong portfolio piece can be reasonable early on, but this should be a deliberate, limited exception, not a long-term pricing strategy, since it anchors client expectations too low.
- How do I explain fixed pricing to a client who wants hourly billing?
- Explain that fixed pricing gives them budget certainty and shifts the estimation risk to the freelancer, while hourly billing means their final cost depends on how the project unfolds, which many clients find less predictable.
- Does using a tool like Themify mean I should charge clients less?
- Not necessarily — clients are paying for the finished, functioning WordPress site and the expertise behind it, not for the number of hours spent on boilerplate setup, so time saved on scaffolding can go toward margin or toward spending more time on the parts of the project the client actually notices.
- What is a reasonable deposit to request before starting work?
- A deposit of 30 to 50 percent before starting is common practice among freelancers and protects against non-payment, with the remainder due on delivery or split across project milestones for larger projects.
- How do I price ongoing WordPress maintenance separately from the build?
- Maintenance is usually priced as a monthly retainer covering updates, backups, and minor edits, separate from the one-time build fee, with the retainer scope clearly defined so it does not silently expand into unpaid feature requests.